position in race, class, culture, sexual orientation, age, and even period of history. These fields can be seen as identity categories that put a woman in her circumstance
with others in the world.
H. Review of Related Studies
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things was published in 1996 and received the Man Booker Prize in 1997. For over a decade, the book had been the
corner stone to abundance of articles, theses, and even books. Google finds at least six studies that use the book as their object. Melani Budianta, in a short essay that she
wrote as a preface to the Indonesian translated edition, also mentioned two post- graduate theses examining the novel.
However, one of the prominent characters of this novel is that it is a rich resource for academic discussions. Besides the detailed description of its narrative
elements, the use of allusion and metaphors, unpredicted plot structure, and linguistic puns, the novel can be used in discussions of various topics. In her essay Melani
Budianta mentioned some examples such as gender and sexuality studies; class, religion, ethnicity, and racial representation; cultural identity and post-colonial
position; history and ideology; domestic violence to national unrest p. xxiii, Indonesian edition. Below is the review of academic writings that read the novel
using various perspectives. Being put in its stylistic context, Mangihut Nababan, in his thesis Paradoks
dalam The God of Small Things karya Arundhati Roy Paradox in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, focuses on the use of paradoxical words in the writing
style of the novel. Nababan studied the use of simile, metaphor, and comparison technique that makes the narration of the story has its own strong and unique
character. The thesis was defended in 2000 in Universitas Indonesia. In the same year, another Universitas Indonesia post-graduate student
defended a thesis that focuses on The God of Small Things. Putting the novel in a post-colonial context, a post-graduate thesis entitled Anglofilia dalam The God of
Small Things karya Arundhati Roy dan Dogeaters karya Jessica Hedgedorn Anglophile in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and Dogeaters by Jessica
Hedgedorn was written by Rahayu Puji Haryanti. The thesis focuses on how the Indian characters look up to the Englishness. Taking Chacko’s made up idiom
“Anglophile”, this thesis examines on how Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria idolizes Sophie, a nine year old London girl with brown hair and blue eyes; how the
local communist leader, Comrade Pillai, teaches his six year old son to memorize Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; and many other examples of indication that the
colonized are still looking up to the colonizer. In the other part of the world, a Chinese scholar also examined the novel
using post-colonial point of view. Yu Ru Chu from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan defended a thesis entitled “Recasting India: Caste, Trauma, and the Politics of
Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things” by January 2006. Using Homi Baba’s Post-colonial studies as the surgery scissors, Yu Ru Chu skinned the
novel and examined the influence of the caste system in post-colonial India. She also investigated the cultural conflicts as depicted in the narration of trauma, history, and
transgression. In the thesis caste system is seen in its relation to Velutha and Ammu’s forbidden relationship; Estha and Rahel’s ruined childhood that leads to a practice of
incest in their adulthood; and the trauma experienced by other Ipe family that causes different bitter futures.
A study that focused on trauma as portrayed in the novel was also done by an American scholar, Sarah Young Longworth, that wrote “Trauma and the Ethical
Dilemma in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things” to earn her master degree in 2006 from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Longforth focused on how
Roy’s narrative technique can elaborate the trauma and ethical dilemma as experienced by the characters. She argues that as a trauma narrative, the novel is best
read as a warning that the society can perpetuate trauma, make it as an inevitable experience for individuals, and thus, each person’s future is unique and therefore
cannot be predetermined. Longworth suggests that the controversial scenes in the novel e.g. the twins’ incest, are not to be seen as Roy’s either pessimistic or
optimistic attitude towards trauma and ethical dilemma as happening in the society. From the same alma-mater as Longworth, Emily Stockdale wrote “Language
and The Creation of Character in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things”. The thesis was defended in 2008 to earn her master degree. Stockdale cleverly sees the
novel from linguistic perspective as well as post-colonial point of view to examine how Roy used language psychologically, typographically, structurally, and culturally
in the novel. In the thesis, Stockdale considers language not only in the form of words written or spoken throughout the work, but also the way cultural groups understand
and communicate to one another through customs and tradition. In the thesis, Stockdale examine the clever and ironically humorous use of Malayalam and English
as is put to the tongues of the characters in the novel. The novel is also fruitful while studied in the feminism point of view. Golam
Gaus Al-Quaderi, an associate professor at the Department of English, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, collabourated with Muhammad Saiful Islam, a lecturer at
the Department of English, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, in writing a 17 pages long essay on the novel. Entitled “Complicity and Resistance: Women in
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things”, the essay was published by Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies by December 2011.
The essay focuses on the female characters in the novel that is said to represent the agents of struggle for change. Quaderi and Islam focused on Ammu,
Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Rahel and their actions within patriarchy, class, caste, and feudal-capitalist economic structure.
In the essay, the women are seen to unconsciously rebel against the social systems in their own way. Regardless their unsuccessful effort and the fierce
punishment they have to endure, the women followed their instincts and make decisions and actions that, in their own way, represent the voice of the oppressed
trying to get a better life. Another thesis that sees the novel in post-colonial feminist point of view is
“Arundhati Roy: Reclaiming Voices on the Margin in The God of Small Things” by Angelika Olsson. The thesis was written in the undergraduate level and defended by
January 2011 in the English Literature School, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Högskolani Gävle, in Gävle, Sweden. In her thesis, Olsson compares how
three female characters in the novel: Ammu, Baby Kochamma, and Mamachi, react differently towards the male hero, Velutha. Her thesis is that Roy depicts diverse
representation of subaltern women in the ‘Third World’. Olsson argued that Roy has designed her female characters to display agency and thus, despite their oppressed
and marginalized status, are responsible for their own actions and decisions. In Hong Kong, CHAN Wing Yi Monica defended “A Stylistic Approach to
The God of Small Things” in 2007 to earn Master of Philosophy degree from Lingnan University. In her thesis, she uses Leech and Short’s theory to analyze the novel
stylistically. She focused on three linguistic aspects that Roy used in writing the novel: 1 Lexis, in which Roy frequently and particularly utilized adjectives
throughout the novel; 2 Grammar, in which Roy used minor sentences and noun phrases to create certain effect to the reader; and 3 Figures of speech, in which Roy
used neologism and repetition to freely create new words with new meanings. In the later part of her thesis, CHAN Wing Yi Monica relates the novel with a pastiche
entitled “Hong Kong Locust Stand I”. The writing of this thesis, anyhow, joins the parade of academic writings
inspired by this novel simply because its richness provides what seems to be unlimited material to be discussed. From the studies mentioned above, none of them
have seen the Love Law from Ammu’s point of view and relates it with Ammu’s identity. Seeing this vacancy, in addition to the significance of Ammu in the novel
and the influence of the Love Law in contemporary India, this thesis has a legitimate existence in literary studies.
I. Significance of the Study
The initial attempt in writing of this thesis adapts that of the writing of the novel itself. Roy, in her interview with David Barsamian The Progressive, implies
that The God of Small Things is one of her tools to convey her political statements about the injustice in India. For her, storytelling can be a strong medium to convey
political statements. She stated: Its very important for me to tell politics like a story, to make it
real… The God of Small Things is a book where you connect the very smallest things to the very biggest: whether its the dent
that a baby spider makes on the surface of water or the quality of the moonlight on a river or how history and politics intrude into
your life, your house, your bedroom qtd. in Barsamian, The Progressive.
Roy was interviewed in the morning she was freed from jail for protesting against a series of dams that was about to be built by the Indian government with the
loan from World Bank. The dam was about to be built in the central and western states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The project threatened the
homes and livelihoods of millions of the poor and Untouchables living in the area. She remarked:
Many of the worst affected by the project are tribal people and poor, low-caste farmers called Dalits, many of whom have already
been forced out of ancestral lands into refugee camps with little compensation qtd. in Barsamian, The Progressive.
Furthermore, she sees her experience of being jailed with many other women in Tiharas as an evident that the system in India victimizes women and force them to
be convicts. She met some other prisoners that were there for killing their husbands, drugs, and prostitutions. Roy sees that these prisoners were transgressors that were
forced to commit the crimes by the circumstances of their lives. It is clear that Roy’s activism is to fight for freedom of speech in India. She is
moved by the sufferings of the marginalized, which in India are the Untouchables and the women. Even today, being a woman in India is dangerous. Crimes against women
such as dowry murder, domestic violence, acid throwing, gang-rape, and female infanticide are easily identified with Indian patriarchal culture. Just to give voice or to
speak her mind is a luxury to many Indian women. Besides her interview, her own essays also reveal her political leanings. In an
introduction she wrote to the re-publication of B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste 2014, again she reveals her concerns on Indian caste system and women
within the system. The introduction, entitled “The Doctor and The Saint”, contains
many of her thoughts that then illuminated her initiative to write The God of Small Things in the first place.
In the essay he comments that caste system is applied as a fierce and strict regulation in Ayemenem, though it is not mentioned in formal education and in
school textbooks. About the caste system in her hometown, she remarked Ayemenem had its own separate “Paraiyar’ church where Paraiyar’
priests preached to an ‘Untouchable’ congregation. Caste was implied in peoples’ names, in the way people referred to each
other, in the work they did, in the clothes they wore, in the marriages that were arranged, in the language we spoke. Even so, I
never encountered the notion of caste in a single school textbook “The Doctor” 3.
Caste system and how it affects the life of the Untouchables, force them to live as if they are not fellow human beings, has enraged Roy.
Here it can be seen that Roy had a mission to give voice to the voiceless, either the Untouchables or the women, through the writing of her novel. Using made
up poetic terms such as the Love Law and biology, as the social system and as the humanly desires respectively, Roy pictures the things she encounters in her life and
present it in to the wider audience.
Thus, the significance of this thesis is also to prolong the echo of those voices, through the examination of Ammu. The thesis attempts to give voice to Ammu who
represents millions of silenced women and the Untouchables of India.
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW
This chapter gives a view on the theoretical framework used in analyzing the novel. The theories used are the theory of identity, theory of transgression, theory of
Ideological State Apparatuses, and theory of subaltern.
A. Theory of Identity
In the study of literature, investigation on the character’s identity is a common theme. Novels that raise issues such as post-colonialism, gender, and race, commonly
increase the tense of their plot when the characters are in a conflict between who they are and who they are supposed to be. According to Steph Lawler in Identity, there is a
tendency to cast identity as something to be considered only when it is in trouble. Often, one’s identity becomes a significant cause of conflict only when it is in crises;
in which people are not quite sure who they are 1. She also states that there is a tendency to notice change, rather than continuity, of someone’s identity 47.
According to Lawler, there are three forms of identity: personal identity, social identity, and ego identity or felt identity. Personal identity is the unique
characteristics of the person, both in his or herself and in terms of their relation with others. Social identity, also called categorical identity, is an identity that a person has
by virtue of their membership of social categories. Meanwhile, ego identity or felt identity refers to a subjective sense of ‘who we are’ or who we believe ourselves to
